Lifestyle: What Overstimulation Does To Our Days And Nights

Watching too much fast-paced television isn't good for your sleep. Even worse, this can seriously impair your mental functioning during the day, regardless of your age.

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that four-year-old children viewing fast-paced television for nine minutes demonstrated impaired executive functioning.

What is executive functioning? It is simply a collection of mental activities that involve, among other things, planning, working memory, problem-solving and inhibition regulation.

The study only focused on the immediate effect of watching fast-paced television, but other studies have already shown that too much television viewing, especially of programs featuring intense subject matter, affects long-term attention and learning abilities. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends limiting children over age two to no more than two hours of high-quality, educational-based television per day.

The study defined fast-paced television viewing as watching scenes that change every 11 seconds and Sponge Bob Square Pants was an example of a children's show that meets that criteria. In contrast, slow-paced television viewing was defined as a show presenting a scene that changes every 30 or more seconds and Caillou was an example of a children's show that satisfied that criteria.

So we know what happens with children who watch too much fast-paced television. What about adults? The effect is similar. The difference with adults is that adults have more mental resources to allocate to the task of processing fast-paced information. But we still only have so many mental resources, so something else takes a hit and resources used to do other things become depleted.

Fast-paced television only mimics the behaviors we adopt as adults. Texting, emailing, making and receiving phone calls and over-multitasking are not meaningfully different than watching television that changes every 11 minutes when it comes to how this affects the mind.

Over-multitasking without mental breaks leads to stress, mental fatigue and burnout. And consequently, your sleep is a sensitive indicator of your stress level. A high stress level means poor sleep. How can you counteract the effect of constant activity and information overload? Having an established bedtime and a pre-bedtime routine will help you navigate around these sleep pitfalls.

And among His Signs is your sleep by night and day, and your seeking of His bounty. In that surely are Signs for a people who hear. [Holy Quran, 30:24]

The Holy Quran has puts emphasis and importance on sleep and how it is vital for health and wellbeing, commanding mankind to sleep and rest during the night:

And He it is Who has made the night a covering for you, and Who has made sleep for rest, and has made the day for rising up. [Holy Quran, 25:48]

And We have made your sleep for rest. [Holy Quran, 78:10]



The Ahmadiyya Post, Lifestyle. By Zubair Ahmed. Sept 19, 2011